Repeatability

If interactive art is still experimental, then we sometimes need to step back and remember how the experimental method goes. It’s not enough to constantly seek novelty. We also have to ensure that our experiments can be repeated, and see whether we get the same results.

Since interactivity involves humans, we won’t. That’s no reason not to try. The differences in response may tell us something about how humans have changed in the intervening period. Our own understanding may have changed, and the results of the experiments may therefore tell us new things.

Also, at the very least we should be reminded of what we’ve learned, so that we can build on it. I so often see interactive art that tries to do too much, or fails to understand what will happen to the work once people start to play with it, explore it, ignore the instructions, break it and subvert it.

I have a concrete suggestion here. Let’s recreate some of the waypoints in our history. I’d like to see Myron Krueger’s Videoplace up and running in the Powerhouse Museum, and Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz’s Hole in Space installed in oh, Sydney and Perth, or Newtown and Harajuku. Ah, the classics!